


Broken Things and Missing Strings

by sareli



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-26
Updated: 2013-06-01
Packaged: 2017-12-12 23:50:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/817486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sareli/pseuds/sareli
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maybe from the very moment the two names James and Tiberius were selected and applied to one of the universe's newest inhabitants, something has been broken.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A series of vignettes examining James Kirk and where it all went wrong.

Something’s broken.

Maybe from the very moment the two names James and Tiberius were selected and applied to one of the universe's newest inhabitants, something has been broken.

Kirk always thought so. For as long as he can remember feeling, he has felt incomplete.

For a while when he was young, he thought humans’ insides were a series of interconnected strings that tied everything together. He started calling the emptiness his missing string at the age of six, when he was too smart for his own good and sadder than any six-year-old ought to be.

So he does things that maybe he shouldn't. He says they make him feel alive, but that's not the appeal at all, because he already feels alive, just incompletely. (Dead people don't feel incomplete, they don't feel anything at all.)

When he does stupid, exciting things, he doesn't have to feel the disconnect or the empty space left behind. Even if it's just for a few fleeting moments, he doesn't have to feel anything but adrenaline powering through his veins.

He thought his father was his missing string. It was, after all, the moment everything shattered, and it was decided that everything in Kirk’s life was meant to go wrong. (Coincidentally, it was also the exact moment his life began.)

It made sense. George Kirk’s death was a logical cause for blame when a wayward, towheaded kid with his last name sits in front of your desk, with fresh cuts and old bruises marring his face and a glaring absence of a father figure.

And why else would a mother distance herself from her sons so easily, but for the constant reminder of her husband in their round faces? Why else would people look upon little James Kirk in pity and simultaneously expect greatness from him?

Joining Starfleet just makes it worse. Though he doesn’t regret his choice at all, in the three years he spends training, his sense of emptiness grows keener, and the cracks inside of him grow deeper.

He feels homesick for a home that doesn’t exist. He seems to get lost in his own life. With increasing frequency, he wakes up in the middle of the night in the presence of ghosts that he can’t even identify.

The missing string is more absent than ever. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> doesn't quite qualify as k/s yet but I'll get there


	2. Chapter 2

He can feel himself in Spock’s head.

The feeling is multi-layered. Kirk’s own consciousness exists on both the innermost and outermost layers, because if he focuses hard enough, he can feel the icy air of the cave, and Spock’s cold fingers on his face. But his consciousness resides mostly in the very center, surrounded by Spock’s mind.

Kirk sees Spock’s experiences through the filters of both Spock’s eyes and his own. Strangely, he doesn’t feel anything himself, the only things he feels are emotions that he recognizes as Spock’s, which makes it even stranger because Spock never appeared to have emotions until now. He feels Spock's feelings so strongly that it's hard to discern where he ends and Spock begins, so he goes along for the ride, hanging on to Spock's consciousness for dear life.

He hears the Vulcan’s voice narrating the course of events that plays out in their shared mind.

They come to what appears to be the end of this story, and the voice stops, but the images don’t. They change from a seamless narrative to a lightning-fast clip reel.

Kirk knows they’re memories because he feels Spock’s familiarity with them, but it's like he's lived them. He sees chess games and hears wavering excerpts of quiet conversations and countless other short scenes. Present in nearly every one is his own face, but it’s different somehow. Sometimes he sees a similarly different Bones or Uhura or other people he knows from the Enterprise, but mostly he sees the other him.

Every time the other Kirk smiles, a star shines right into [Spock’s] soul. It threatens to burn and consume [Spock], but all it does it inspire something pleasant and warm; molten and shining; simple and clear.

The other Kirk calls [Spock] “brother” and “the nobler half of myself”, and [Spock’s] psyche sings. That simple feeling radiates through [Spock], glorious, golden, and addictive.

But then the sun goes dark and [Spock] is left in a frozen wasteland alone. Cold glass separates two hands trying desperately to kiss fingertips. From a distance, [Spock] hears that his _t’hy’la_ is gone, really gone, never to return.

Loss, anguish, grief, despair, loneliness; the onslaught threatens suffocation.

Kirk sucks icy air in through his nostrils, and when that’s not enough, he opens his mouth and takes in ravenous gulps. Tears sting at his eyes, all heat and salt. They threaten to spill over his cheeks and expose them further to the chill. His vision blurs as he tries to hold them in.

Old Spock murmurs something about emotional transference, but Kirk is too busy coaching himself on the finer points of respiration to really listen.

Even though it all happened in the space of a second, Kirk can’t shake the emotional turmoil that Spock had felt. He still remembers traces of the happy one, made of starlight and gentle heat. But even more keenly can he feel the cold, heavy ones that left Spock in such distress.

They settle into the space of Kirk’s missing string, pulsing painfully in time with his heart.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> from zero to _t'hy'la_ in 348 words.  
>  i promise it'll make sense later.


	3. Chapter 3

He should have expected it, but the mind meld has falsely softened Spock’s edges, leaving Kirk unprepared for the cuts he suffers at the Vulcan’s hands.

Spock still regards him with annoyance and contempt, and while that used to infuriate Kirk (and still does), at this moment it dismays him more than anything else.

“ _It’s me!_ ” He wants to shout. _“It’s Jim, your_ t’hy’la! _”_

But that doesn’t even make sense because he doesn’t really know what that word means or where it came from or how to pronounce it.

Kirk wants to scream.

Provoking Spock is easy. Fuck the captaincy, Kirk just wants Spock to feel what he does, cut up inside and burned out on the exterior. Control of the Enterprise is just an added bonus.

Spock’s scream of rage is deeply satisfying. The first blow lands and pain blossoms where Spock’s fists make contact. And though Spock comes close to strangling him, Kirk feels a strange sense of peace when he’s trapped against the console, the warmth left behind by spent adrenaline floods through his system.

He breathes deep, and coughs, and breathes deep again.

_In, out. In, out._

Once again, he has to remind himself how.

Triumph runs rampant through his entire being, not just because Spock is quietly resigning command across the bridge, but because Kirk knows now. He knows what’s missing. It isn’t his father, it’s _Spock_ , stupid, brilliant, infuriating Spock, and it has been all along. And even though the empty place still hurts like hell, and Spock probably hates Kirk’s guts right now, Kirk can’t help the elation that comes along with having the answers.

He lets his head fall back to rest against the console for a few seconds, relishing the serenity of it all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> am I overusing "t'hy'la" yet lol  
> 


	4. Chapter 4

“It appears you’ve been keeping valuable information from me.”

Kirk knows that Spock means the ship, but his heart skips a beat or two. He avoids the question gracefully, if he does say so himself.

He tells Spock it’ll work, and the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it look of acceptance in those dark eyes, that tiny flicker of trust in Kirk is enough to send his foolish human heart soaring. Kirk grins to himself as he walks off the ship.

Reality starts poking holes in his ridiculous high as soon as Spock is out of his sight. Kirk feels his face fall and set itself into an expression of grim determination. He or Spock or both could die, and many more with them.

He closes his eyes for just a second and thinks of the hesitant trust in Spock's face, and he has to go on. He saves the image to a place much closer to his heart than he'll ever admit.

* * *

 

The sheer relief Kirk feels when he sees Spock’s face later is almost embarrassing, but he is too giddy to care. His plan worked, his terrible, disastrous, insane plan pulled through, even with 95.7% of the odds stacked against him and everything at stake. And no one was lost. Not even Spock.

Spock, who now stands beside him, close enough to touch, is still completely oblivious to how very much he is. But Kirk is okay with that, because at least he has Spock now, like a golden thread through his heart, tying him neatly together.

Kirk is whole once again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we did it we climbed this whole mountain  
> ty for reading~


End file.
